Wouldn't be shocked if this also dies under Trump. It wasn't super well thought out to begin with, but now that outcomes are for sale this will be swept under the rug.
Wouldn't be shocked if this also dies under Trump. It wasn't super well thought out to begin with, but now that outcomes are for sale this will be swept under the rug.
There is so much that died last November. One was any amount of trust I had remaining for the federal government. I can't imagine anything from the president's admin or department of justice that...
There is so much that died last November. One was any amount of trust I had remaining for the federal government. I can't imagine anything from the president's admin or department of justice that is done in good faith or for a reason that will help the country in other way. This is either corrupt from the beginning or will become corrupted. Anything that seems good is either an illusion or an accident.
Google is a hard company to break up. An anti-monopoly ruling, while probably justified, would be truly unprecedented. This is because, as other commenters here point out, Google really doesn’t...
Google is a hard company to break up. An anti-monopoly ruling, while probably justified, would be truly unprecedented.
This is because, as other commenters here point out, Google really doesn’t have any true monopoly. There exist competitors in search, competitors in video hosting, competitors in web browsers, etc. I personally only use Google Maps and Youtube. This is just because Apple Maps has various UI idiosyncrancies that really bother me, and I use Youtube without cookies as effectively a video search engine.
Google just makes the most user-friendly product in every single category because of their integration.
Their integration also gives them their real monopoly: ad services. If you want to pay for ads on the web, you are going through Google. This monopoly tax surely increases prices for consumers everywhere.
How do you break Google’s ad services up? You can separate ad services from the products, but then you literally tear all the product monetization from the products and the data collection from the ad services. It’d be a death blow.
You could split the ad services into several companies, but then the product side would just build out an ad service that can outcompete the rest.
In my mind, it’s hard to actually break up Google in a way that breaks up the monopoly and also doesn’t kill Google’s business model. (That being said, it’s probably ideal for the selling of personally target ads based on web activity to not be a business model.) That makes, in my mind, this anti-trust legislation unprecendented.
I doubt federal legislators have a nuanced enough picture of the tech landscape to be able to solve this problem effectively. I consider myself pretty tech-familiar and I really struggle to develop solutions.
The ones best equipped to design a transition to a healthy and competitive business plan are employees and executives at Google. And, yeah…
Am not a layer. But in my mind, at least, it's hard to call Google a search monopoly, because there are a fair few competitors, and it would require almost no effort to set up another one. It's...
Am not a layer.
But in my mind, at least, it's hard to call Google a search monopoly, because there are a fair few competitors, and it would require almost no effort to set up another one. It's not like telephone companies, or airlines, or something.
Gaining market share would be another trick entirely, but I don't think that's the question. Article says they are paying to have Google search included on devices. I don't see that as a problem, unless there's more to it. Paying to exclude others, that would be a problem. Paying to be the forced default, that would also be a problem.
I just don't see them as a monopoly, the same way I saw Microsoft twenty years ago.
But they are paying to be the default search. That's basically how Mozilla are funded. e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion...
Google has spent a substantial amount of money pushing Chrome, too. There’s been several random unrelated Windows software installers I’ve run over the years that try to install Chrome by default...
Google has spent a substantial amount of money pushing Chrome, too. There’s been several random unrelated Windows software installers I’ve run over the years that try to install Chrome by default along with whatever else, for example.
This feeds the search monopoly, and the search monopoly feeds Chrome’s monopoly (anybody who’s used Google in a non-Chrome browser has seen those stupid “this is better in Chrome” in-page popups).
That’s what makes this all so bad. It’s practically impossible to compete against.
Default, yes, but it's easy enough to change that. Firefox doesn't fight me on it. Maybe my opinion is influenced because I am reasonably tech savvy. And if you are referring to speech patterns,...
Default, yes, but it's easy enough to change that. Firefox doesn't fight me on it. Maybe my opinion is influenced because I am reasonably tech savvy.
And if you are referring to speech patterns, that's a consequence of the monopoly, not a cause of it. I suppose you could argue that it's a self-reinforcing cycle, but I'm not sure how we would go about stopping it, and I'm pretty sure I would not want to use it as a criteria for if a monopoly needs to be broken up.
I feel like I agree with the route the EU took with the DMA since non-tech savvy people are not necessarily aware of all the options made available to them. Having an onboarding screen showing...
I feel like I agree with the route the EU took with the DMA since non-tech savvy people are not necessarily aware of all the options made available to them. Having an onboarding screen showing providers in a randomized order is a good idea.
The other half of my issue however stems from a severe lack of digital literacy education, something that can and should be emphasized in curriculums. It isn't just a question of tech savvy or not, it's a question of fundamental digital literacy that is lacking even in the youngest generation.
In terms of speech patterns, some countries (the US included) have the ability to annul trademarks that have been genericized. I don't believe it's ever been applied to a software offering, but it has been applied to things like Asperin in the US.
Google initially became a search monopoly based on quality alone. It beat major players like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, GoTo, AltaVista, Dogpile, AOL and others because it consistently offered...
Google initially became a search monopoly based on quality alone. It beat major players like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, GoTo, AltaVista, Dogpile, AOL and others because it consistently offered better search results.
Nowadays their service has utterly declined, to the point where alternatives like Bing, Duckduckgo, Qwant, even Yandex are looking more appealing.
Wouldn't be shocked if this also dies under Trump. It wasn't super well thought out to begin with, but now that outcomes are for sale this will be swept under the rug.
There is so much that died last November. One was any amount of trust I had remaining for the federal government. I can't imagine anything from the president's admin or department of justice that is done in good faith or for a reason that will help the country in other way. This is either corrupt from the beginning or will become corrupted. Anything that seems good is either an illusion or an accident.
Google is a hard company to break up. An anti-monopoly ruling, while probably justified, would be truly unprecedented.
This is because, as other commenters here point out, Google really doesn’t have any true monopoly. There exist competitors in search, competitors in video hosting, competitors in web browsers, etc. I personally only use Google Maps and Youtube. This is just because Apple Maps has various UI idiosyncrancies that really bother me, and I use Youtube without cookies as effectively a video search engine.
Google just makes the most user-friendly product in every single category because of their integration.
Their integration also gives them their real monopoly: ad services. If you want to pay for ads on the web, you are going through Google. This monopoly tax surely increases prices for consumers everywhere.
How do you break Google’s ad services up? You can separate ad services from the products, but then you literally tear all the product monetization from the products and the data collection from the ad services. It’d be a death blow.
You could split the ad services into several companies, but then the product side would just build out an ad service that can outcompete the rest.
In my mind, it’s hard to actually break up Google in a way that breaks up the monopoly and also doesn’t kill Google’s business model. (That being said, it’s probably ideal for the selling of personally target ads based on web activity to not be a business model.) That makes, in my mind, this anti-trust legislation unprecendented.
I doubt federal legislators have a nuanced enough picture of the tech landscape to be able to solve this problem effectively. I consider myself pretty tech-familiar and I really struggle to develop solutions.
The ones best equipped to design a transition to a healthy and competitive business plan are employees and executives at Google. And, yeah…
Mirror: https://archive.is/F97Il
Am not a layer.
But in my mind, at least, it's hard to call Google a search monopoly, because there are a fair few competitors, and it would require almost no effort to set up another one. It's not like telephone companies, or airlines, or something.
Gaining market share would be another trick entirely, but I don't think that's the question. Article says they are paying to have Google search included on devices. I don't see that as a problem, unless there's more to it. Paying to exclude others, that would be a problem. Paying to be the forced default, that would also be a problem.
I just don't see them as a monopoly, the same way I saw Microsoft twenty years ago.
But they are paying to be the default search. That's basically how Mozilla are funded.
e.g.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion
How many people even say search, or say they're going to bing it, or duck it, or kagi it, or searx it, they really don't. They google it.
Google has spent a substantial amount of money pushing Chrome, too. There’s been several random unrelated Windows software installers I’ve run over the years that try to install Chrome by default along with whatever else, for example.
This feeds the search monopoly, and the search monopoly feeds Chrome’s monopoly (anybody who’s used Google in a non-Chrome browser has seen those stupid “this is better in Chrome” in-page popups).
That’s what makes this all so bad. It’s practically impossible to compete against.
Default, yes, but it's easy enough to change that. Firefox doesn't fight me on it. Maybe my opinion is influenced because I am reasonably tech savvy.
And if you are referring to speech patterns, that's a consequence of the monopoly, not a cause of it. I suppose you could argue that it's a self-reinforcing cycle, but I'm not sure how we would go about stopping it, and I'm pretty sure I would not want to use it as a criteria for if a monopoly needs to be broken up.
I feel like I agree with the route the EU took with the DMA since non-tech savvy people are not necessarily aware of all the options made available to them. Having an onboarding screen showing providers in a randomized order is a good idea.
The other half of my issue however stems from a severe lack of digital literacy education, something that can and should be emphasized in curriculums. It isn't just a question of tech savvy or not, it's a question of fundamental digital literacy that is lacking even in the youngest generation.
In terms of speech patterns, some countries (the US included) have the ability to annul trademarks that have been genericized. I don't believe it's ever been applied to a software offering, but it has been applied to things like Asperin in the US.
A relevant link for the DMA: Android.com DMA Choice Screen
Google initially became a search monopoly based on quality alone. It beat major players like Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, GoTo, AltaVista, Dogpile, AOL and others because it consistently offered better search results.
Nowadays their service has utterly declined, to the point where alternatives like Bing, Duckduckgo, Qwant, even Yandex are looking more appealing.
Right, monopoly based on consumer preference.
These days, people are migrating away from them, to an extent. It's easy to ditch them, for most people.